


Rodney and Teyla Are Going to Die

by Persiflager



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Mission Fic, Post-Canon, background Teyla/Kanaan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 21:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6167248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflager/pseuds/Persiflager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After rummaging around in his pockets, Rodney found a length of Ace bandage which he’d used for his weak knee three missions ago. He helped Teyla strap her arm to her chest and resolutely tried to ignore the fact that they were now completely and unequivocally fucked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Very kindly beta-ed by mific.

Rodney fell through the closing door just in time, shoved through by Teyla’s hand in the small of his back, and he lay there gasping for breath on the cold stone floor because he didn’t dare turn around to see if she’d made it. It didn’t come as a shock that he was a coward - Rodney still considered cowardice to be the rational choice in most situations, and he was well-acquainted with his own physiological reactions - but he’d always thought he was capable of facing facts. This didn’t require any physical bravery; all he had to do was turn his head and look.

Teyla’s hand landed on his shoulder.

“Still alive?” he asked, stupidly, grabbing her hand and holding onto it with his own.

“Still alive,” Teyla agreed.

…

When Rodney had got his breath back, he rolled over, sat up and took inventory. The room they were in was a stone cube with a volume of approximately sixty-four cubic meters - four meters in every direction, just like the last nine rooms. The only light source was a glowing white square set in the centre of the ceiling. There were two doors - the one they’d entered by, and the one they’d shortly be leaving by. On the wall to the left of the exit door as you faced it was a tap and against the remaining wall was a compact toilet.

“What is it with this galaxy and rough rope?” said Rodney, looking at the pink, raw wound across the back of his left hand. “Remind me to speak to Woolsey about introducing hemp next time we’re negotiating for trade.” His voice echoed slightly in the empty room.

Teyla was sitting down and breathing heavily, her head bowed, with one of her arms held at an awkward angle.

Rodney frowned. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Not that I can do anything about it if you are but - please don’t be hurt. Our survival depends on you not being hurt, which I recognise is unfair but there you go, do I complain when everything hangs on me being a genius?”

Teyla took a deep breath and raised her head. “I believe my shoulder is dislocated. I need your help to push it back in place.”

“Oh god.”

They ended up with Teyla lying on her back on the floor with her arms straight and Rodney sitting next to her on her injured side. Now that he was looking, Rodney could see that the shoulder looked wrong - it was squared, not rounded, and there was an odd depression in the muscle.

He wished she’d worn a top with sleeves.

At Teyla’s instruction, Rodney grasped her elbow in one hand and her wrist in the other, and bent her arm until it was at a ninety degree angle. She flinched in pain, and he wanted to throw up.

“Now,” said Teyla when she’d recovered. “When you are ready, gradually rotate my arm towards you. I believe the bone should pop back into the socket with relative ease.”

“Have you done this before?”

“Yes.”

“Because I really think you might be better off waiting for proper-”

“ _Rodney_.”

“Right, right. Rotating now.”

Teyla let out a small grunt as Rodney rotated her arm half a degree but she didn’t say to stop so he kept going, as slowly and steadily as he could manage. It was a lot like working on the Atlantis sanitation system, actually - the trick was to be patient, not to try and force it into place, although he now realised that it was a lot easier to stay calm when dealing with silent, inanimate pipes than with a trembling, breathing person.

“Should I-”

“Keep going,” said Teyla through gritted teeth, tears running down her face.

Rodney closed his eyes and moved her arm another millimeter closer until he felt something shift and heard a sudden, sickening click.

“Please tell me that’s it,” he said, letting go.

“Yes,” said Teyla, her eyes closed. “Thank you.”

Rodney scooted back to sit against the wall, put his head between his knees and breathed deeply until he didn’t feel like passing out any more.

They’d only come to M7X-068 in the first place because Ronon’s girlfriend had found a reference in the Ancient database to a military facility and Sheppard had got all excited, like Torren when someone brought him a colourful plastic toy. Rodney liked it when Sheppard was happy - it made him want to bring Sheppard more shiny things in a theoretically infinite feedback loop just like the one with his cat and catnip, although catnip toys were easier to pick up at the corner store than ultra-advanced weaponry.

When he’d recovered from the disgusting emergency surgery portion of their rest break, Rodney drank from the wall tap (which had a worrying metallic tang but didn’t seem to have killed them so far) and re-filled their canteens. Teyla emptied hers in one long swallow, then held it back out to Rodney to re-fill, which he did.

“So,” he said, looking around the room to see if he could spot any clues - a dropped coin, a smear of blood, anything. “Do you think they’re-”

“I’m sure that John and Ronon are fine,” said Teyla. “Do you have anything I can use for a sling?”

After rummaging around in his pockets, Rodney found a length of Ace bandage which he’d used for his weak knee three missions ago. He helped Teyla strap her arm to her chest and resolutely tried to ignore the fact that they were now completely and unequivocally fucked.

“I’m just saying, that blade didn’t miss me by much, and Sheppard and Ronon are both taller than me.” Rodney swallowed. “What if-”

“If either of them had been injured there, I would have noticed,” said Teyla. She got up awkwardly, using only the one hand, and went over to the wall with the entrance door where she sat down cross-legged, leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Rodney sat down next to Teyla and watched the exit door for signs of opening. If he’d still had his watch, he’d have been able to estimate how long they had, but the transportation beam that had snatched them had left behind anything with technology more advanced than a zipper. He thought the breaks were getting shorter, but perception of time was notoriously subjective. He hoped he was wrong. Given that they’d been making it through by a narrower and narrower margin each time, a margin which now appeared to be non-existent, he was in no rush to face the inevitable. People who said that the waiting was the hardest part were full of shit - waiting was perfectly tolerable when the alternative was dying. “I still think we shouldn’t have split up,” he said for the tenth time that day.

“We had no choice.”

“Maybe you and Ronon should have gone first,” said Rodney, and he hated himself a little for saying it. “You’re stronger and faster than me and Sheppard. You’d have stood a better chance.”

“Probably.” Teyla didn’t look offended. “But we would not have been able to operate the puddle-jumper, nor any other technology of the Ancestors. If this place was built by them-”

“Oh, it was them. No-one else would be crazy enough to build a homicidal training maze and leave it running for innocent passers-by to stumble into thousands of years later.”  
“-then perhaps Colonel Sheppard will be able to manipulate it somehow.”

“He’d better,” said Rodney. “Because I don’t see any other way we’re getting out of here, and my DIY-gene probably isn’t going to cut it.” But he stood up anyway and paced the cell, running his hands over every inch of the walls and thinking _OFF! STOP! LET US OUT OF HERE! THIS IS ALL A HORRIBLE MISUNDERSTANDING_ as loudly as he could, just in case something miraculously whirred to life.

“Rodney, sit down,” said Teyla after a while. “We need to conserve our strength.”

“ _You_ need to conserve your strength,” said Rodney, but he sat down next to her anyway. “I need to keep from going out of my mind.”

“Our strategy hasn’t changed. We make our way over the obstacles, avoiding the hazards and watching for anything we can use to escape, and get to the next room before the door locks.”

“I don’t like our chances.”

Teyla nodded. She was bandaged and dirty, with streaks on her face where tears had traced paths through the dust, but somehow still managed to project an air of calm. It was _hugely_ annoying.

“How are you not freaking out? I mean, I know I tend to look on the pessimistic side, but I don’t think I’m wrong here. This is bad.”

“Yes. But things have often been bad before - worse, even - and yet we have survived.”

“Well, that’s the mother of all sampling biases.”

“And, as a mother, I would very much like to return home to Torren. I will do everything in my power to make sure that happens,” said Teyla, guilt-tripping Rodney as deftly as she tripped John with her fighting sticks.

While Rodney didn’t particularly enjoy feeling guilty, in this case it was a pleasant change from despairing about their imminent demise. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that Teyla should survive instead of him - he knew it was the right thing to say, and he would have liked to be the kind of person that meant it, but he honestly wasn’t sure he did, and certainly not because of the whole motherhood thing. Torren would be fine; one decent parent beat the two crappy ones that Rodney grew up with. Teyla had a better claim on the grounds of her importance to the political stability of the Pegasus galaxy - she’d been networking like crazy since they got back, establishing alliances all over the place. He still wasn’t sure it outweighed the potentially ground-breaking contributions he might still make to science, along with his vital role keeping Atlantis running and developing weapons to fight the Wraith but, looking at it objectively, there was at least an argument to be made for saving her at his own expense.

But he wouldn’t do it. No point saying something nice and noble when they both knew that in reality he wouldn’t follow through.

“So,” he said instead. “How is the whole parenthood thing going? Has whatshisname adapted to being a stay-at-home mom?”

Teyla hmmed. “Kanaan has very much enjoyed living on Atlantis, but it is important to both of us that Torren spends time with our people. We have been discussing the possibility of Kanaan raising Torren on New Athos for part of each year. I have suggested that he might also take on part of my role as leader of our people, as I am there so rarely, but he is reluctant.”

“Huh.” Rodney tried to think of some useful advice but all he had in his relationship arsenal was apologies and buying chocolate, neither of which seemed appropriate. Anyway, he hated apologizing and usually ended up eating the chocolate himself. “You wouldn’t miss them?”

“Of course. But other things are more important.” Teyla unfolded her legs, stretched them out in front of her and started massaging her right knee with her free hand. “I hear that Dr Keller is returning to Atlantis.”

“Yeah, she gave me a heads-up.” Rodney looked at the rope burn on his hand in an unconscious association of ideas, then realised what he was doing and looked away. “They’ve made some progress on the Hoffan virus and I think she’s getting bored with being in the lab all day. And I’m not usually one to say ‘I told you so’, but I did say to her, ‘look, easy access to Thai take-out and not nearly dying on a regular basis sounds glamorous, but six months of working with the monkeys they have at the SGC will make you wish you were on a Wraith hive-ship’.”

“You are pleased?”

“God, yes. Dr Janssen is a moron and a disgrace to the medical profession, and that’s a profession that has lower standards than a strip club on two-dollar Tuesday.”

Teyla smiled in that polite way she had that usually meant ‘Earthlings are peculiar and I don’t want to know’. “Do you think that you will re-kindle your romantic relationship?”

Rodney considered the question. “No. No, I’m pretty sure that’s not on the cards.” Jennifer, to her credit, knowing Rodney’s history in mis-understanding these things, had been very clear in her break-up speech:

1) She was definitely, unilaterally breaking up with him.  
2) There wasn’t anything he could do to change her mind, nor did she believe he needed to change - they were just fundamentally incompatible in the long-term.  
3) No, she couldn’t be more specific.  
4) Yes, if he insisted, there were behaviours he might want to consider revising for future relationships, but changing them now wouldn’t make her not break up with him.  
5) Yes, it had something to do with the incident when he met her dad.  
6) She hoped that they would be able to keep a professional working relationship.  
7) She also hoped that they could stay friends.  
8) Regarding 6) and 7), she thought it would help if they had some space for a while, and therefore she was going to accept Carolyn’s longstanding offer of a secondment at Stargate Medical.

He’d had a strong suspicion that she’d prepared it in Powerpoint which was yet another thing they had in common, but she’d been sadly unswayed by his counter-arguments and had packed her bags and left. On the whole, it had been one of his better break-ups.

“We’re still friends,” said Rodney, and maybe it said something sad about his reduced expectations these days but he was actually kind of proud of that.

“That’s good,” said Teyla, beaming at him like Mrs Gallagher in kindergarten when he’d daubed some hideous artwork with his chubby, paint-laden fingers; he had serious doubts about her standards but it made him feel good anyway. “I’m glad that you will not have a problem working together.”

“Eh, it’s not like we’ll be going on many missions together,” said Rodney with a yawn. “Senior staff and medical checks I can cope with. Twelve hours alone together in a jumper with someone who doesn’t want to sleep with you anymore? Now that’s awkward.”

Teyla gave him a curious look.

“Not that I’ve ever done that,” said Rodney quickly.

Teyla’s eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. “You and … John. Were involved?” Rodney could see the light of understanding dawn in her eyes, as if she’d just made sense of something that had been puzzling her, and he spared a brief moment from his incipient panic to regret that she wasn’t entirely stupid.

“What?! No! I never said that, and it’s not true, and, for the record, if I was talking about anyone, I was talking about Ronon.”

“Ronon,” said Teyla, looking amused and unconvinced.

“Yes, why not? He’s a fine figure of a man. Very handsome. Very butch. And hey, if you don’t think I could get a guy like Ronon, then frankly I am offended, and-”

Teyla patted his knee and Rodney subsided.

“It wasn’t … a big thing.” Rodney wasn’t even sure his involvement with John was a thing, singular - more a series of individual occurrences, discrete and discreet. True, there was technically a first time they had sex, and a last time, and a period in between where John sometimes showed up at his room and if Rodney made a pass it was successful more often than not, but on the whole he thought characterizing it as a relationship was something of an exaggeration (not least because they’d carried on doing everything apart from the sex just the same as while they were sleeping together, which was rarely the case with exes in Rodney’s experience).

Technically, Rodney wasn’t sure they’d even broken up - John had just stopped turning up at his room and had made excuses whenever Rodney offered to blow him. Rodney could take a hint (eventually) so he’d stopped offering, sulked for a while, then asked Katie Brown out.

It occurred to Rodney that he’d never actually asked John about it, and maybe that had been a mistake. He knew John better these days, and John might be smarter than he looked but his judgement when it came to personal matters was patchy at best and he had a self-sacrificing streak a mile long.

“You really didn’t know?” he asked, curious. John had been paranoid about people finding out. Rodney had kept his mouth shut in the interests of getting laid but had privately been of the opinion that no one would care. In a small community like Atlantis it was hard to keep secrets - you just had to trust that anyone who noticed would keep it to themselves.

“No,” said Teyla. “Does anyone else know?”

Rodney considered. “Radek, maybe. I never told him but I think he probably knows. Plus he gave me a Caramac after Sheppard jilted me.”

“I see.”

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” asked Rodney belatedly. “I know we’re probably going to die on this stupid planet but in the unlikely event we make it back to Atlantis I’d be really grateful if you didn’t tell anyone.”

“I will keep your secret,” said Teyla gravely.

“Thanks.”

Teyla smiled at him, and Rodney smiled back, and he felt oddly content. Teyla’s eyes were kind and her smile was broad; even in ripped and dirty combat gear she was beautiful, and she was his friend, and Rodney was suddenly, selfishly glad that she was there with him.

“You know-” he said, but he didn’t get to finish the sentence because a klaxon blared and the exit door slid open, revealing the outside world.

“Come on, Rodney,” said Teyla, pushing herself up onto her feet.

“I don’t want to,” he said, frightened and unmoving, with the sudden childish conviction that if he stayed perfectly still, time would stop too.

“ _Now!_ ”

“Okay, okay.” Rodney scrambled to his reluctant feet and followed Teyla out the door.

…

The sun was setting as they exited the chamber, casting long, dark shadows across the obstacle course laid out in front of them. There were sheer, high walls on either side to keep them penned in, and in the distance was another building just like the one they’d just left, with its door wide open. Above them, hovering like giant, armed bumble-bees, were the two drones that would follow them the length of the course and shoot them if they didn’t make it in time.

Rodney followed in Teyla’s fast, confident footsteps as closely as he could, jumping, ducking and rolling their way through the moving lasers like a pair of gymnasts (or, more accurately, like one gymnast and her panting, out-of-shape stalker), and he was just beginning to think that they might make it when a wall rose up from the ground in front of them. It was eight feet high, stretched all the way across the course, and was the last thing standing between them and safety.

Teyla had managed to get them both over a similar wall earlier by pushing Rodney up to the top so that he could pull her up after him, but she wasn’t going to be able to do that with a dislocated shoulder. There was no way for Rodney to get over.

“Rodney…,” began Teyla, and he could see that she knew it too.

He knelt down and laced his fingers together, palms up. If anything, it was something of a relief that the decision had been taken out of his hands - he didn’t have to choose between him and Teyla, just between Teyla making it and neither of them making it. That was easy.

Teyla hesitated.

“This is killing my knees, you know.”

Teyla nodded and stepped into the cradle of his hands, with one hand on his shoulder for balance. She squeezed his shoulder once, then Rodney stood up and pushed her as far up as he could with everything he had left until he felt her weight lift. He stood back and watched her pull herself one-handed over the top, and then Teyla was gone.

Rodney turned and faced the approaching drones. “Did you see that? I saved her life!”

The drones failed to respond.

“Oh, what would you know.” Rodney’s feet ached. It occurred to him that there wasn’t anyone around to impress by dying on his feet so he might as well be comfortable, and he sat down in the late afternoon sunshine with his back against the wall. Now that the endorphins of being heroic had worn off, he mostly just felt tired and annoyed.

He could hear the whir of the drones powering up their weapons. He hoped they had good targeting systems. He’d like to take them apart; he’d probably be able to make John some really cool weapons out of their components, weapons that would make John grin like an idiot and say ‘Nice work, Rodney’.

“For the record, I-”

The drones fired and Rodney died.


	2. Chapter 2

“You didn’t _die_ ,” said John. “Stop saying that. The drones hit you with a transport beam and you’re _fine_.”

They were in the main square of the village that the beams had dumped them in, where the local inhabitants were throwing some sort of celebration in honour of the first strangers to come through the gate in a century (or possibly it was another harvest festival, Rodney hadn’t really been listening, the important thing was that people kept giving him food). There were lit torches, a food tent, a folk band, people dancing energetically, and a man doing a trick with three juggling balls and the Pegasus equivalent of a ferret.

Rodney took a swig from the metal jug one of the locals had handed him with a broad smile and a clap on the back. The liquid inside was boozy, somewhere between vodka and absinthe on the ‘this will fuck you up’ scale, and was faintly redolent of WD-40. “Hey, there’s no need to be jealous, just because I got a heroic death saving Teyla while you got - what was it? Fell off a log?”

“They were slippery,” said John. He swiped the jug from Rodney and took a big gulp before wiping his hand across the back of his mouth, scowling murderously at Rodney all the while. “Like you’d have done any better.”

“Look, I’m sure you’ll have another opportunity to sacrifice yourself next week. I’m not trying to horn in on your schtick. The point is, I thought I’d died, and I was very brave about it, and what I’m trying to tell you is that I had something of an emotional epiphany.”

“Great. I’m pleased for you,” said John. “Did you manage to get anything useful out of the control console?”

“Sure, and I turned off the automation so it won’t just grab anyone who comes near it, but-”

“John!” said Teyla, wandering over from the group she’d been chatting to. She looked happy and flushed and was dangling an empty jug from the fingers of her good hand, her other arm having been re-strapped to her chest by the nearest thing the locals had to a doctor. “And Rodney. Are you well?”

“Peachy,” said John. “Having fun?”

“I have been having a most interesting conversation with the Zorollans,” said Teyla. “It appears that they were able to watch our progress on video screens inside the observation room. As they are unaware of the original purpose of this place, they believe that the training course is a sort of testing ground, placed here by the Ancestors to sort the worthy from the unworthy, and over the years they have evolved a great many rituals regarding its use.” She glanced over at where a small crowd of adoring people was circling Ronon, who stood at least a head taller than his fans. “They are very impressed by how far Ronon made it through. I believe they wish him to accept a place in their government.”

“That’s great,” said John. “Not psychotic at all.”

Teyla eyed him curiously. “The Zorollans do not have the gene. They cannot operate any of the controls. They would not have been able to rescue us, even if they had wanted to.”

“It’s not like there’s a lot of entertainment round here,” Rodney added. “It’s that or the guy with the ferret, and he wouldn’t make it past the first round of ‘Pegasus Has Got Talent’.”

Teyla looked between the two of them with a thoughtful expression on her face. Teyla had a great poker face - Rodney couldn’t tell if she was thinking _hey, these two used to fuck, that’s weird_ , or _what’s Pegasus Has Got Talent?_ , or even _in an emergency situation, which one would I kill and eat first?_.

“I believe I will go and check on Ronon,” said Teyla. “I do not think it would be a good idea for him to run for office.” She nodded to both of them, turned, and walked off in the direction of Ronon and his fan club.

“What was that about?”

“God knows.” Rodney looked around at the crowded square - there were people wandering everywhere, and if they stayed still any longer they were probably going to have to make polite conversation. “Hey, do you want to get out of here?” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the nearby lake.

“Lead the way.”

The path was just a dirt track but it had been well trodden down, and the moon was bright enough for them to make their way along it without having to use their newly restored flashlights. The air was thick with scent - woodsy, loamy smells mingled with smoke from the village fires and the cool, clean smell of fresh water.

After a few minutes they reached the lakeside and sat down on the sandy shore.

“What’s with you?” asked Rodney when they’d passed the jug back and forth a couple of times. “I know meet-and-greets suck, but you’re usually better at them than this.”

John stretched out his legs in front of him and leaned back on his elbows, squinting up at the sky. He had the body language of a moody teenager and stank of mud and dried sweat, and Rodney wanted to screw him blind. “I just spent twelve hours trapped in a fucked-up Ancient version of the Crystal Maze with no way of knowing if you and Teyla were okay. Why are you so damn cheerful? You’re not usually Mr Bright Side.”

Rodney shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m pleased to not be dead, that’s always good. And honestly, I’ve had worse near-death experiences - okay, all the running and physical exertion was unpleasant, but it was kind of nice to bond with Teyla. You and Ronon have been competing for uncle of the year lately, with all the babysitting and whatnot - I’ve been feeling a little, well, left out.”

John glanced at him sidelong. “You realise she’s practically married? With a kid?”

“Yes?” The moonshine must have killed off more brain cells than Rodney thought, because it took him a few moments to work out what John was saying. “Wow, really? You’re jealous of _Teyla_?”

“No,” said John, scowling into the distance. “I’m just saying, don’t expect her to fall into your arms-”

“As strange as this sounds, Teyla’s my friend. I respect and fear her.”

“Because I know what you’re like, you have this fantasy about saving the day and getting the girl-”

“I’m not saying she’s not as hot as the surface of a blue giant, but frankly she intimidates me. Even if she was interested, I don’t think I could get it up. I don’t even think about her when I jerk off, and I think about pretty much everybody.”

A duck quacked on the far side of the lake, the sound carrying across the water.

“Well, good,” said John, and he took a swig from the jug.

“Hey,” said Rodney. “You know how we used to screw around? We should do that again.”

John choked on his drink.

“So, what,” said John when he’d stopped coughing, “was that your big emotional epiphany?”

“Pretty much,” said Rodney, undeterred by John’s sceptical tone. “I actually have no idea why we stopped, and in hindsight that’s probably something I should have asked at the time but in my defence I was pretty sleep-deprived and I think busy re-building the city that week.”

John took a deep breath, as if to say something, then let it out slowly. “Does it matter?”

“Not if the reasons no longer apply. They were probably dumb anyway. I didn’t realise it back then, but you’re terrible at relationships.”

“ _I’m_ terrible? Which one of us went to propose and ended up dumping his girlfriend? And since when were we in a relationship?”

“We fucked thirty-nine times, it was a thing,” said Rodney. “And at least I tried.”

John didn’t respond to that. He just sat there, presumably thinking, although it was impossible to tell what went on underneath that hair.

One of the things Jennifer had told Rodney was that sometimes he needed to be patient. Rushing someone to give him an answer could make it less likely that he’d get the answer he wanted. If he couldn’t wait patiently, he should try to find something to distract him for a few minutes.

In the absence of book, tablet or any other source of entertainment, Rodney was stuck with listening to the various sounds of alien nature. He couldn’t hear any more ducks - were ducks diurnal? Had the previous one been a lone insomniac? Rodney felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the misfit mallard - but there were mysterious splashing sounds from the lake that Rodney’s imagination decided to translate into Lovecraftian tentacles.

He shuffled a couple of inches back from the edge of the water.

Behind them was the forest, with its cacophony of forest-related noises that Ronon or Teyla would undoubtedly have been able to translate into animal activities but which just sounded like a lot of rustling to Rodney. The village party was still in full swing - he could hear the drumming and shouting.

A twig snapped and Rodney jumped.

“So, how about it?” he said, patience exhausted.

John hummed.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” said Rodney. “It’s not that hard a decision. Unless fucking with me is your version of foreplay, in which case I would like it noted that I strongly disapprove.”

“Well, I don’t know, Rodney,” said John in a slow, lazy, drawl, like the sarcastic dick that he was. “Maybe I’m just bowled over by all this romance.”

“You want romance? I’ll give you romance.” Rodney shuffled closer so that their legs were touching and he was looking down at John’s uptilted face, and he curled his left hand over John’s right where it was resting on the sand. “I thought I was dying and I thought of you, and just the thought of you made me feel better. You’re my best friend, and you’re super-hot, and you’re terrible at relationships but so am I. Let’s be terrible together.”

John’s grin gleamed white in the moonlight. “Why, Dr McKay, this is all so sudden,” he said, turning his hand over and lacing his fingers in between Rodney’s.

“I’m a genius, we think faster,” said Rodney, and he bent down to kiss John’s grinning lips. John rose up to meet him so that they clashed their teeth together but then they were kissing, sweet and hot, tongues in each other’s mouths, snatching breaths until Rodney was light-headed. Time slowed to a crawl, which was entirely in accordance with special relativity if you considered how fast Rodney’s heart was beating.

In the distance a duck quacked, almost as if it approved.


End file.
